A multi-agent system for the support of producer coalition formation in electricity markets

All over the world Distributed Generation is seen as a valuable help to get cleaner and more efficient electricity. To get negotiation power and advantages of scale economy, distributed producers can be aggregated giving place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer. Virtual Power Producers are multitechnology and multi-site heterogeneous entities. Virtual Power Producers should adopt organization and management methodologies so that they can make Distributed Generation a really profitable activity, able to participate in the market. In this paper we address the development of a multi-agent market simulator – MASCEM – able to study alternative coalitions of distributed producers in order to identify promising Virtual Power Producers in an electricity market.

A new approach for multi-agent coalition formation and management in the scope of electricity markets

This paper presents a new methodology for the creation and management of coalitions in Electricity Markets. This approach is tested using the multi-agent market simulator MASCEM, taking advantage of its ability to provide the means to model and simulate VPP (Virtual Power Producers). VPPs are represented as coalitions of agents, with the capability of negotiating both in the market, and internally, with their members, in order to combine and manage their individual specific characteristics and goals, with the strategy and objectives of the VPP itself. The new features include the development of particular individual facilitators to manage the communications amongst the members of each coalition independently from the rest of the simulation, and also the mechanisms for the classification of the agents that are candidates to join the coalition. In addition, a global study on the results of the Iberian Electricity Market is performed, to compare and analyze different approaches for defining consistent and adequate strategies to integrate into the agents of MASCEM. This, combined with the application of learning and prediction techniques provide the agents with the ability to learn and adapt themselves, by adjusting their actions to the continued evolving states of the world they are playing in.

Multi-agent negotiation for coalition formation and management in electricity markets

Negotiation is a fundamental tool for reaching understandings that allow each involved party to gain an advantage for themselves by the end of the process. In recent years, with the increasing of compe-titiveness in most sectors, negotiation procedures become present in practically all of them. One particular environment in which the competitiveness has been increasing exponentially is the electricity markets sector. This work is directed to the study of electricity markets’ partici-pating entities interaction, namely in what concerns the formation, management and operation of aggregating entities – Virtual Power Players (VPPs). VPPs are responsible for managing coalitions of market players with small market negotiating influence, which take strategic advantage in entering such aggregations, to increase their negotiating power. This chapter presents a negotiation methodology for the creation and management of coalitions in Electricity Markets. This approach is tested using MASCEM, taking advantage of its ability to provide the means to model and simulate VPPs. VPPs are represented as coalitions of agents, with the capability of negotiating both in the market, and internally, with their members, in order to combine and manage their individual specific characteristics and goals, with the strategy and objectives of the VPP itself.

MASCEM - an electricity market simulator providing coalition support for virtual power players

This paper presents MASCEM - a multi-agent based electricity market simulator. MASCEM uses game theory, machine learning techniques, scenario analysis and optimization techniques to model market agents and to provide them with decision-support. This paper mainly focus on the MASCEM ability to provide the means to model and simulate Virtual Power Players (VPP). VPPs are represented as a coalition of agents, with specific characteristics and goals. The paper details some of the most important aspects considered in VPP formation and in the aggregation of new producers and includes a case study based on real data.

Dynamic QoS-Aware coalition formation

Users of wireless devices increasingly demand access to multimedia content with speci c quality of service requirements. Users might tolerate di erent levels of service, or could be satis ed with di erent quality combinations choices. However, multimedia processing introduces heavy resource requirements on the client side. Our work tries to address the growing demand on resources and performance requirements, by allowing wireless nodes to cooperate with each other to meet resource allocation requests and handle stringent constraints, opportunistically taking advantage of the local ad-hoc network that is created spontaneously, as nodes move in range of each other, forming a temporary coalition for service execution. Coalition formation is necessary when a single node cannot execute a speci c service, but it may also be bene cial when groups perform more e ciently when compared to a single s node performance.

Coalition of distributed generation units to Virtual Power Players - a game theory approach

Smart Grids (SGs) have emerged as the new paradigm for power system operation and management, being designed to include large amounts of distributed energy resources. This new paradigm requires new Energy Resource Management (ERM) methodologies considering different operation strategies and the existence of new management players such as several types of aggregators. This paper proposes a methodology to facilitate the coalition between distributed generation units originating Virtual Power Players (VPP) considering a game theory approach. The proposed approach consists in the analysis of the classifications that were attributed by each VPP to the distributed generation units, as well as in the analysis of the previous established contracts by each player. The proposed classification model is based in fourteen parameters including technical, economical and behavioural ones. Depending of the VPP strategies, size and goals, each parameter has different importance. VPP can also manage other type of energy resources, like storage units, electric vehicles, demand response programs or even parts of the MV and LV distribution network. A case study with twelve VPPs with different characteristics and one hundred and fifty real distributed generation units is included in the paper.

Virtual power producers integration into MASCEM

All over the world Distributed Generation is seen as a valuable help to get cleaner and more efficient electricity. Under this context distributed generators, owned by different decentralized players can provide a significant amount of the electricity generation. To get negotiation power and advantages of scale economy, these players can be aggregated giving place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer. Virtual Power Producers are multi-technology and multi-site heterogeneous entities. Virtual Power Producers should adopt organization and management methodologies so that they can make Distributed Generation a really profitable activity, able to participate in the market. In this paper we address the integration of Virtual Power Producers into an electricity market simulator –MASCEM – as a coalition of distributed producers.

A multi-agent based approach for intelligent smart grid management

The spread and globalization of distributed generation (DG) in recent years has should highly influence the changes that occur in Electricity Markets (EMs). DG has brought a large number of new players to take action in the EMs, therefore increasing the complexity of these markets. Simulation based on multi-agent systems appears as a good way of analyzing players’ behavior and interactions, especially in a coalition perspective, and the effects these players have on the markets. MASCEM – Multi-Agent System for Competitive Electricity Markets was created to permit the study of the market operation with several different players and market mechanisms. MASGriP – Multi-Agent Smart Grid Platform is being developed to facilitate the simulation of micro grid (MG) and smart grid (SG) concepts with multiple different scenarios. This paper presents an intelligent management method for MG and SG. The simulation of different methods of control provides an advantage in comparing different possible approaches to respond to market events. Players utilize electric vehicles’ batteries and participate in Demand Response (DR) contracts, taking advantage on the best opportunities brought by the use of all resources, to improve their actions in response to MG and/or SG requests.

Virtual power producers market strategies

This paper presents MASCEM - a multi-agent based electricity market simulator. MASCEM uses game theory, machine learning techniques, scenario analysis and optimisation techniques to model market agents and to provide them with decision-support. This paper mainly focus on the MASCEM ability to provide the means to model and simulate Virtual Power Producers (VPP). VPPs are represented as a coalition of agents, with specific characteristics and goals. The paper detail some of the most important aspects considered in VPP formation and in the aggregation of new producers and includes a case study.

Renewable-based generation integration in electricity markets with virtual power producers

The development of renewable energy sources and Distributed Generation (DG) of electricity is of main importance in the way towards a sustainable development. However, the management, in large scale, of these technologies is complicated because of the intermittency of primary resources (wind, sunshine, etc.) and small scale of some plants. The aggregation of DG plants gives place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer (VPP). VPPs can reinforce the importance of these generation technologies making them valuable in electricity markets. VPPs can ensure a secure, environmentally friendly generation and optimal management of heat, electricity and cold as well as optimal operation and maintenance of electrical equipment, including the sale of electricity in the energy market. For attaining these goals, there are important issues to deal with, such as reserve management strategies, strategies for bids formulation, the producers’ remuneration, and the producers’ characterization for coalition formation. This chapter presents the most important concepts related with renewable-based generation integration in electricity markets, using VPP paradigm. The presented case studies make use of two main computer applications:ViProd and MASCEM. ViProd simulates VPP operation, including the management of plants in operation. MASCEM is a multi-agent based electricity market simulator that supports the inclusion of VPPs in the players set.

Transmission cost allocation using cooperative game theory: a comparative study

In this paper is presented a Game Theory based methodology to allocate transmission costs, considering cooperation and competition between producers. As original contribution, it finds the degree of participation on the additional costs according to the demand behavior. A comparative study was carried out between the obtained results using Nucleolus balance and Shapley Value, with other techniques such as Averages Allocation method and the Generalized Generation Distribution Factors method (GGDF). As example, a six nodes network was used for the simulations. The results demonstrate the ability to find adequate solutions on open access environment to the networks.

Multi-agent based electricity market simulator with VPP: Conceptual and implementation issues

This paper presents a new architecture for the MASCEM, a multi-agent electricity market simulator. This is implemented in a Prolog which is integrated in the JAVA program by using the LPA Win-Prolog Intelligence Server (IS) provides a DLL interface between Win-Prolog and other applications. This paper mainly focus on the MASCEM ability to provide the means to model and simulate Virtual Power Producers (VPP). VPPs are represented as a coalition of agents, with specific characteristics and goals. VPPs can reinforce the importance of these generation technologies making them valuable in electricity markets.

Iterative refinement approach for QOS-Aware service configuration

In heterogeneous environments, diversity of resources among the devices may affect their ability to perform services with specific QoS constraints, and drive peers to group themselves in a coalition for cooperative service execution. The dynamic selection of peers should be influenced by user’s QoS requirements as well as local computation availability, tailoring provided service to user’s specific needs. However, complex dynamic real-time scenarios may prevent the possibility of computing optimal service configurations before execution. An iterative refinement approach with the ability to trade off deliberation time for the quality of the solution is proposed. We state the importance of quickly finding a good initial solution and propose heuristic evaluation functions that optimise the rate at which the quality of the current solution improves as the algorithms have more time to run.

Building adaptable, QoS-aware dependable embedded systems

Most of today’s embedded systems are required to work in dynamic environments, where the characteristics of the computational load cannot always be predicted in advance. Furthermore, resource needs are usually data dependent and vary over time. Resource constrained devices may need to cooperate with neighbour nodes in order to fulfil those requirements and handle stringent non-functional constraints. This paper describes a framework that facilitates the distribution of resource intensive services across a community of nodes, forming temporary coalitions for a cooperative QoSaware execution. The increasing need to tailor provided service to each application’s specific needs determines the dynamic selection of peers to form such a coalition. The system is able to react to load variations, degrading its performance in a controlled fashion if needed. Isolation between different services is achieved by guaranteeing a minimal service quality to accepted services and by an efficient overload control that considers the challenges and opportunities of dynamic distributed embedded systems.

Tolerância a falhas em sistemas de tempo-real distribuídos e embebidos

Este documento descreve um modelo de tolerância a falhas para sistemas de tempo-real distribuídos. A sugestão deste modelo tem como propósito a apresentação de uma solu-ção fiável, flexível e adaptável às necessidades dos sistemas de tempo-real distribuídos. A tolerância a falhas é um aspeto extremamente importante na construção de sistemas de tempo-real e a sua aplicação traz inúmeros benefícios. Um design orientado para a to-lerância a falhas contribui para um melhor desempenho do sistema através do melhora-mento de aspetos chave como a segurança, a confiabilidade e a disponibilidade dos sis-temas. O trabalho desenvolvido centra-se na prevenção, deteção e tolerância a falhas de tipo ló-gicas (software) e físicas (hardware) e assenta numa arquitetura maioritariamente basea-da no tempo, conjugada com técnicas de redundância. O modelo preocupa-se com a efi-ciência e os custos de execução. Para isso utilizam-se também técnicas tradicionais de to-lerância a falhas, como a redundância e a migração, no sentido de não prejudicar o tempo de execução do serviço, ou seja, diminuindo o tempo de recuperação das réplicas, em ca-so de ocorrência de falhas. Neste trabalho são propostas heurísticas de baixa complexida-de para tempo-de-execução, a fim de se determinar para onde replicar os componentes que constituem o software de tempo-real e de negociá-los num mecanismo de coordena-ção por licitações. Este trabalho adapta e estende alguns algoritmos que fornecem solu-ções ainda que interrompidos. Estes algoritmos são referidos em trabalhos de investiga-ção relacionados, e são utilizados para formação de coligações entre nós coadjuvantes. O modelo proposto colmata as falhas através de técnicas de replicação ativa, tanto virtual como física, com blocos de execução concorrentes. Tenta-se melhorar ou manter a sua qualidade produzida, praticamente sem introduzir overhead de informação significativo no sistema. O modelo certifica-se que as máquinas escolhidas, para as quais os agentes migrarão, melhoram iterativamente os níveis de qualidade de serviço fornecida aos com-ponentes, em função das disponibilidades das respetivas máquinas. Caso a nova configu-ração de qualidade seja rentável para a qualidade geral do serviço, é feito um esforço no sentido de receber novos componentes em detrimento da qualidade dos já hospedados localmente. Os nós que cooperam na coligação maximizam o número de execuções para-lelas entre componentes paralelos que compõem o serviço, com o intuito de reduzir atra-sos de execução. O desenvolvimento desta tese conduziu ao modelo proposto e aos resultados apresenta-dos e foi genuinamente suportado por levantamentos bibliográficos de trabalhos de in-vestigação e desenvolvimento, literaturas e preliminares matemáticos. O trabalho tem também como base uma lista de referências bibliográficas.